Orbital Dynamics
by Ajora
Summary: Five times Faris and Alexander's orbits almost intersected, and the one time they did.
1. Occultation

_Sarisa, get down from there. You'll fall and break your neck._

_Sarisa, stop playing with your food._

_Sarisa, that toy is Lenna's. You're the older sister. Act like it. _

_Sarisa, stop fidgeting. _

_Sarisa, stop slouching._

_Sarisa Scherwil, why won't you behave?_

Every recrimination, censure, command, and note of frustration that Alexander ever uttered to his eldest daughter haunts him when he stops to breathe. When he stops, even for a moment, his regrets crash upon him and he finds himself rethinking every decision he ever made in his daughter's upbringing. Maybe she would have stayed safely in the cabin during that fateful storm if he'd been a little more stern. Maybe he could have waited until she was older before trying to introduce her to his dragon, or maybe he could have introduced them when she was born and gotten her used to his dragon's presence. He knows he should have left her at home and gone on his diplomatic visit alone. _Would have, could have, should have_. The words ring in his head like funeral bells.

His heart has been ripped out and the hollow that remains aches with each breath, and all he can think to do about it is to keep moving. Because if he doesn't keep moving, keep himself busy, he'll remember that Sarisa was _his _and he _lost her_ because he _didn't think_. His firstborn daughter, his little spitfire, the guiding star in his sky. His dragon heard her when she was born and Alexander knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she'd inherited his ability to talk to dragons. He had such hopes for her: that she would bond with his dragon, that she'd be braver than him, that she'd have all the freedoms he never had.

It's hope and grief operating in tandem that drives him to every port town, hamlet, and fisherman's cabin along the Tycoon coast to look for a five-year-old girl who might have washed up after the storm. That every official in each spot of civilization organized a search should have been more heartening than it was, but all he can seem to feel anymore is that hollow in his chest.

With each failed search, the light of hope diminishes. Some grim part of him wonders when it will go out.

.*.

Only complete fools venture out to sea when sea dragons mate. They've no concept of the safety of lesser mortals, and their passions kick up wild thunderstorms and whirlpools that can destroy the sturdiest naval vessel. Whoever captained the stately ship Merrick's crew rummaged through was a blithering idiot who deserved its destruction.

The body of a nearly-drowned child led them to the wreckage. The ship's pilot revived the child, got little more than her name and pleas for parents she didn't know the names of, and, as if to spit in Merrick's face, he decided to _adopt_ the brat.

This, of course, presents Captain Merrick Reid of Carwen with a problem. A pirate ship is the last place any child should be, especially an obviously well-bred girl. Merrick, having been Mairi once upon a time, knows that better than anyone. Robbing her of her fancy clothes and pendant and tossing her back in the sea would be kinder than letting some of Merrick's crew catch wind of her presence.

Not that Merrick was above robbing the brat. He'd ordered the brat's hair lopped short and her silk dress replaced with rags meant for the pilot's nephew, and claimed the fancy pendant as his prize. The brat's subsequent tantrum was quickly silenced with a light cuff to the ear and a reminder that she should be grateful to him for his generosity in letting her live long enough for his pilot to ship her back to Istory to be raised with his nephew.

It was while Merrick was in Tule that his plans for the brat changed.

The dress was quickly reduced to parts for the rag-and-bone man who loitered around the docks—Merrick knew him to be the type to avoid eye contact and expected that, if questioned about the silk rags, the man wouldn't be able to identify his face. The pendant he took to a Karnakian pawnbroker with a knack for identifying a thing's place of origin. Just in case it meant something.

"Not seen this set-up before," the pawnbroker said as he peered down at the pendant with his loupe. "Fine-quality silver, and I'm betting it's alloyed with platinum. Excellent workmanship. The emerald is unusually clear. This cost someone a pretty gil. I'll give you nine grand for it."

Typically Merrick would take the offer and run. Something about it nags at him, though, and he has to ask. "What do you mean about 'this set-up'?"

The pawnbroker puts his loupe away with a clumsiness that warns Merrick immediately that something's off. "Well. I'd say that the shield etched in the middle of the emerald there is a coat of arms for one of them fancy houses. Almost looks like the king of Karnak's. The dragon circling it? That's new." The man pulls out a rag to dab at the beads of nervous sweat that suddenly popped up on his brow. "Don't want to say nothing without being sure, but…"

But Merrick knows, finally, why the blasted thing bothers him. It's not _exactly_ King Karnak's coat of arms. He'd seen this variant flying over Carwen before, when the previous King Tycoon set out to conquer. Somehow or another, the current King of Tycoon's own family ended up in Merrick's grasp.

Merrick leaves the pawnbroker with a red smile for his trouble, just to ensure he won't talk.

Finding his pilot and the brat doesn't take long—Renji watches the girl frolic in the commons with an avuncular air that gives Merrick indigestion. He strides past his pilot to grab the girl by the hand and yank her into the shade of a tree. And, though his knees aren't as good as they used to be, he kneels so that the brat can see how serious he is about this.

"What's your name, lad?"

The brat's tiny nose crinkles at the word. "Farifa Fherwih. I'm a _girh_."

Merrick's teeth grind as the brat reminds him of himself, insisting he's a boy despite how he looks to the world and the name his mother cursed him with before he changed it. This won't work if the brat is as stubborn as she looks. "If you know what's good for you, listen. Your name is Faris. Proper Jacolean name. Finest burglar I knew was a Faris. Don't know where 'Scherwiz' comes from, but it will do. You are a boy. Do you understand?"

"No! I'm Farifa! I'm a girh!"

The slap resounds in the sudden stillness that follows. It was just sharp enough to get the brat's attention, but not hard enough to bruise. Renji steps forward to protect the brat, but stills when Merrick's eyes flash briefly at him before settling back on the her. "You're Faris. You're a boy. You're Renji's nephew. Girls don't belong on a ship. Do you want to be a girl and be tossed back into the sea, or a boy for Renji to take care of?"

The brat says nothing as she gingerly touches her cheek and her eyes brim with angry tears. There's a stubbornness in the set of her jaw which may serve her well. So long as she does what's good for her, Merrick doesn't care what she thinks of him.

"Repeat and speak right: Your name is Faris Scherwiz. You're Renji's nephew. You're a boy."

"I'm Faris Scherwiz. I'm Renji's nephew. I'm a boy." Resentment flashes in the brat's eyes. Merrick gets her to repeat it several more times until it's finally convincing.

When he stands, he brushes the grass off his knees. It'll stain, but the stains can be excused. Looking down at the brat, he sighs. She can't be older than five, maybe six. "You can be a girl inside if you must, but you need to convince everyone else that you're a boy. It's for your own safety."

The resentment fades, just a bit. Merrick doubts the reality of her situation has fully set in yet, but it's something they can work on.

When it's time to finally weigh anchor and leave, the brat falls asleep in Renji's arms and he has to carry her back to the ship. They're stopped briefly by the town's watchmen in their search for a lost princess, but Renji is enough of a bastard to cling to the brat and insist she's his nephew. He'd always wanted a son, after all.

Merrick, upon noticing the sudden wellspring of activity, looks around until his eyes catch on a sky dragon. He remembers the skies above Carwen thick with the beasts, the dragonfire that killed his father, and sneers. The man standing next to the dragon, in Tycoon-blue livery, looks forlorn as he talks to the mayor of Tule and the town watchmen report failure at every turn.

Perhaps he had been too young to avenge his father when the previous King Tycoon was alive, and maybe this King Tycoon had nothing to do with the war, but all royals are scum and Merrick is sure that this one is no different. It _would_ be a pretty bit of poetry, wouldn't it, if Merrick had his hand in raising the princess as just another member of the dregs of society that royals hate so much?

* * *

Cliff notes from Japanese texts applicable here: The prior King Tycoon was a warmonger who sought world domination, and Alexander did the opposite and ruled in peace.  
Cliff note from game: There's a NPC in Carwen who will tell you that the sky dragons/hiryuu/however you wanna translate it were used in a war 50 years before and went extinct but for Alexander's.  
Cliff note, Japanese text and Legend of the Crystals: According to the same text with Alexander's bio, Basic Knowledge, sky dragons have an offensive breath ability. This tracts with Legend of the Crystals, where Tycoon's sky dragon can breath fire.


	2. Osculation

"Alexander, you need to stop this," Lessandra says one day, after the two hundred and fifty-fifth pretender was dismissed and Alexander was left alone to grieve. Her low voice is sharp and acerbic, but it always is lately. "It is ridiculous. We've gotten nothing but pretenders and false hopes. Lenna gets upset every time a pretender leaves. Focus on the daughter you still have, not the one we lost."

She steps before his throne in her simple mourning-black dress, her pale hair pulled back in a tight braid that sharpens her fine-boned features into a severity that suits her better than she knows. Her posture, always straight-backed and perfect, is rigid enough that she could have stepped out of one of her family's portraits. Yet, despite her efforts to present a strong front, the dress makes her look more sickly than usual. Alexander can't remember a time when she wasn't sick.

He wants to glare at his wife, but he knows she's right. She always is. With a sigh, he disregards his own problems and forces himself to ease up for her. "Where—"

"Lenna is with Jenica. Crying." Lessandra's voice, particularly waspish today, jabs straight at where his heart used to be. Her eyes narrow at the sight of him gripping his throne's armrests to get up. "You will apologize to her after supper and not a moment before. I won't have you bungling it before she eats."

Some small part of Alexander is grateful to avoid the prospect of facing his daughter's disappointment for the time being. They've known each other since they were children, and Lessandra reads him so well that she can look right past his defenses. Her shoulders ease ever so slightly in recognition of the old spiritual wound Alexander tries and fails to hide from her. "Your schedule says you have a meeting coming up with the ministry of justice. Will you be able to attend?"

"It's been five years," he says with as little emotion as possible, though the hollow feeling in his chest returns every time a pretender gets his hopes up. "I'll manage."

"Don't we all?" Lessandra steps aside to allow his escape from the throne. The pained way in which she moves makes him suspect that she's bleeding into her knee joint again, and a wholly different sort of grief returns. Lessandra always bleeds too easily, too quickly, and bruises faster. She can do nothing more than set a foot down wrong and be bed-ridden for weeks.

Rather than consider the subject of his wife's mortality in any meaningful way, Alexander stands to offer her his arm. She's too damned proud to accept more than that. Physically he dwarfs her and has to walk slowly so that she can keep up, and her hand always looks too frail on his arm, but her spirit is considerably larger than his. It works out well enough.

It takes enough time to escort his wife to their rooms that he's a bit late to the meeting taking place in his office. The ministers stand when he enters, sit after he does, and he's secretly thankful for the force of habit that allows them to maintain this polite fiction that they respect each other.

Alexander has no illusions about where he stands in the eyes of the noble houses. His predecessor married a commoner and chose a commoner husband for his daughter. In the eyes of the noble houses, this was an offense they only tolerated because his predecessor fattened their coffers with war. Alexander stepped out of his predecessor's shadow and made the throne his own by ruling in peace. Diplomacy, his preferred weapon, is a subtle instrument that must be wielded with a deft and deliberate hand; it is unappreciated by those who profit from strife. That the ministers don't see the broader implications of his actions doesn't particularly bother him—he plays a longer game, and it's one in which their small-minded profiteering doesn't belong.

"Your Majesty, if you would, please reconsider your position on the matter. Being too lax on juvenile offenders only sends the message that they can be permitted to repeat their crimes. There must be some repercussions. The statistics on page fifteen of the report clearly demonstrates that…"

Ten minutes into the meeting and already Alexander wants to get up and leave before he forgets his diplomacy and does something unforgivable. The proposal, on the surface, is a simple affair of sentencing children as adults and therefore allows them to work as adults for the businesses that profit from cheap labor. The other proposal recommends taking juvenile offenders from their guardians and sending them to orphanages, which will only accomplish the same thing. They are both reprehensible enough for a number of reasons, but the ploy to convince him to allow for monetizing child labor sickens him. It's especially transparent because two of these three ministers have businesses that would profit from the enslavement of tiny hands.

Typically Alexander would hear them out, let them make their arguments and let them think he would take their proposals under consideration, make grand gestures, and let the whole thing get caught up in so much bureaucracy that they'll surrender. But he remembers being taken from his parents at eight years old to serve as heir to the warmonger who led to his family's ruin and as husband to the warmonger's sickly daughter. His eldest daughter is gone and the other suffers his negligence. If his glower is strong enough to make one of the ministers pause, it's nothing compared to the anger rising within him.

"That's enough." It's a marvel that his voice sounds so calm. His rising from his chair forces the ministers to rise and accept that this is all he'll hear of the issue. "I will be surveying our prisons to ensure that children aren't being held." The smile he gives them is thin, humorless, and full of teeth. "I expect an alternative that does not abuse children to be brought before me by the end of the week. If you wish to pursue these proposals, talk with the queen."

The ministers balk, in their well-guarded way. Alexander is, after all, the _nice_ one.

.*.

"Faris. Bauble and dagger. Now."

Well. Damn. And she was almost off the ship, too.

Ol' Cap'n Merrick fills the sky as he blocks Faris from climbing out of the hold. His short red-and-white hair sticks out every which way, his rangy limbs are all as brown and scarred as tree branches and twice as ugly, he has a scowl on his face that only gets slightly less severe when he's pleased. Faris still has trouble believing Merrick used to be anything like her.

With a scowl of her own, she takes off the pretty pendant that's all that remains of her parents and turns it over to Merrick for safekeeping. Merrick lets her have it on the ship, but takes it back whenever they're on land. _That_ she gets, a bit—she doesn't want it stolen in town, neither. But the dagger? Merrick gave it to her as a birthday gift!

She turns it over, anyway. Merrick might be a pain, and he's mean a lot of the time, but he keeps saying he does these things for her own good.

Merrick removes his foot from the top rung of the ladder, letting Faris escape to join Ben. "Watch him, boy," Merrick hollers to Ben, Uncle Renji's other nephew. That Ben has to be Faris' sitter just because he's a couple of years older rankles every time. "I don't want to have to come down to the prison for either of you."

"We'll be fine, Cap'n!" Ben beams in that gross, sucking-up way that makes Faris gag. She shakes off the hand he sets on her shoulder to guide her down the gangplank with him.

Faris neither knows or cares which port this is. Something about it being in one of the places more lax to child pick-pockets than most. All she wants is to be off the ship and explore, but Renji thought she should learn other skills for a change of pace.

Other skills being, of course, the thief's arts. Faris can cut a purse well enough, and she's got a deft hand at picking locks, but she's ten and fumbles sometimes. Snatching's easier. She's small enough to lose a mark in the crowd and light enough on her feet to avoid being trampled.

It's her size that makes her extra helpful to Ben and his fellow urchins. They have a fancy house all staked out, ripe for the pluck. They just need someone small enough to get through a cellar window and let them in. That'll be her job.

When they're in town, Ben gets the oldest boy to explain the planned burglary to her. Which he does, kinda. He speaks funny, with words she doesn't quite understand. But there's something about the _way_ he speaks that tweaks at the back of her mind. Which is silly, honestly. She hasn't been here before. Not that she remembers.

They pass the time in wait for night in the way urchins usually do. Ben runs off with his friend, and the other two locals go panhandling. Faris makes off with a few purses, pockets the valuables, and heads off to the corner they were all supposed to meet at after dusk.

They aren't there. Faris swears under her breath, the kind of words she picked up from the crew when they're deep in their cups, and waits. And waits. Finally, when it's so dark that she's certain she's been abandoned, she decides to do it her own damned self. Just like she does with everything else.

She finds her way to the side of the house and makes it through the cellar window well enough, though she has to hold her breath in to squeeze through completely. A match and candle from the kit she brought with her just for this takes care of her lighting, a few pins lets her pick her way past the cellar door's lock.

Faris manages to find a few things worth pilfering. Silverware and some knicknacks, mainly. Some jewel-encrusted odds and ends that she shoves into her boots for later ogling. It's not nearly as wealthy a place as Ben's friends made it out to be, which makes her suspect that she's been had.

_Scratch that_, she thinks dourly as she turns in the middle of sticking a few spoons down her shirt and her eyes meet with those of the house's mistress. _I've been had. Fuckin' Ben's probably havin' a good laugh_.

The speed at which her winnings are taken from her, at which she gets turned over to the police and chucked in a cell with other child miscreants, makes her head spin. All they get out of her is her name and that she's an orphan.

Her first night in jail goes about as well as can be expected. Anyone trying anything with her gets a sharp jab in the nearest fleshy bits, if not a solid punch to the nose or a bite hard enough to break skin, and she's left alone for the rest of the night. She's not old enough to challenge the kids who claimed the pile of hay that served as a bed, so she stakes out a corner and slips into the kind of light sleep she goes into when she knows it's not safe.

It's just about before dawn when Merrick comes for Faris with a thunderous scowl that would make her quake if she didn't know that Merrick was usually more bark than bite. Merrick glowers at her, hauls her out by the ear and makes no apologies or promises to the guard warning him about letting his son go wayward again, and doesn't speak again until they're well out of the jail and down an empty alley.

"'Son'?" Faris repeats, flabbergasted.

Merrick _looks_ repulsed enough by the word, but what he says and what he feels are usually so at odds that Faris has to wonder. "Had to say _something_ to the guard to get him to let you go. Means nothing. Don't make anything of it."

So Faris won't. Merrick is bristly, a pain at the best of times, and he always looks like he swallowed a bug. He's so far from the mental image Faris has of any sort of father figure that thinking on it will make her laugh, and then she'll have to explain herself. Best not think on it.

On the way to the docks, Merrick notices something going on and shoves her into an alley. Faris barely gets a glimpse of flashes of blue as men stride past them in boots that clap smartly against the cobblestones, because Merrick blocks her view and won't let her move around him to see what's going on.

Not that Faris doesn't try. There are some soldier types in fancy blue uniforms, and someone in a blue cloak, but Merrick pushes her away before she can get a better look.

"What the _hell_, old man?" Faris hisses.

Merrick doesn't speak until they're so far down the street that Faris can't make much else out. "Fate come to remind me of my sense, lad. Back to the ship."

Faris' gaze lingers on the departing group in blue, but Merrick tugs her hand in the other direction. No use pursuing it, she supposes. Her life is on the ship, not here.


	3. Transit

Lessandra Scherwil Tycoon died of poison three hundred years before she was born.

As much as Alexander wants to rail against some villain he can see and touch and exact vengeance against, there's no true target to be had. Lessandra's father tried to stop the poison by marrying a commoner and choosing another commoner to be his daughter's husband. At least there, his predecessor succeeded: Lenna shows no signs of having inherited her mother's poisons.

The villainy is not consolidated in one person, it's spread out in every person of noble blood. It exists in a nobleman's insistence on marriage to another noble to keep wealth and power within the family; at this point in time, that other noble is almost certainly a cousin of some degree.

It's not that Alexander hadn't tried to help her. He flew to the most remote reaches of the world, offered the entirety of his predecessor's remaining war chest, and the only solution he could find demanded the sacrifice of his dragon. What could be gained with that? A small reprieve before Lessandra continued to suffer for her ancestors' sins?

What could be gained from his dragon's continued existence? Notos remains the last sky dragon alive, and he cannot lay eggs. Eventually he'll die of old age, and then the sky dragons will be fully extinct. However, Notos is his soul's brother and a symbol that Alexander's clan has not yet died out. He's the hope that someday, perhaps, they might find a compatible, wild female dragon and bring back the sky dragons from extinction.

Either way, he feels like he lost Lenna.

After Lessandra's stinging rebuke, he allowed Lenna to shadow him as he went about his duties as king. She asked questions sometimes, but mostly she just watched and listened. It seems like she has always been watching him, and only now has he noticed it.

Alexander isn't sure what to think of that. Sarisa had Lessandra's spirit, and he knew how to handle Lessandra enough to put up with the worst of Sarisa's tantrums. Lenna was always so quiet and watchful that it was easy to forget she was there. Sometimes she reminds him of himself at that age, living in the shadow of a warlord, and he can only muster up a little more grief over it. No one should be like him, especially not his daughter.

The chocobo-drawn carriage, one of several in the caravan that is part of the traditional state funeral, rumbles along cobblestone roads on its way to allow the common people to pay their respects before the caravan stops at the family mausoleum. Lenna stares blankly, numbly out into the crowds. As far as he knows, she hasn't yet cried for her mother. He wonders if the reality of her mother's death hasn't fully sunk in yet.

"Lenna?"

His daughter blinks, clearing her eyes, and looks up at him. Her hands twist in the folds of her black mourning dress. "Yes, Father?"

Normally, in his interactions with her, he has always been a little stern and mostly remote. It's something he regrets now, when her responses to him are so formal that they might as well be strangers. He tries taking down his walls for her, tries to allow himself to be vulnerable, but he's not sure anymore if he remembers how. "Your lessons will resume soon. Is there any subject you would like to focus on? Music? Astronomy? Art?"

Lenna's eyes flash in that way they did when she plotted to kill his dragon to save her mother. It's not pleasant, and he wonders when that aspect of her developed. Her hands wring in her lap with nervousness. It's like she doesn't quite dare to state her mind.

"Please, Lenna." His smile is wan with a nervousness of his own. When did he forget how to be a father? "You can ask for anything."

The wringing stops and her back straightens in a way that reminds him so much of Lessandra that it hurts. "The captain of the guard says that you are the finest swordsman in the land."

It's his turn to stare blankly. Sword training was his predecessor's demand of him, and it had served him well when four men from another world chased down their evil warlock to his world. It's not something a girl should concern herself with, especially in a time of peace.

But she is his daughter, and he has disappointed her enough over the years that it seems like such a small concession. "Yes?"

"I want to learn how to use a sword." Her voice has the strength of conviction that he hadn't expected. Not from her. "I want to learn how to fight for those who can't protect themselves."

The thought of Lenna getting hurt in training is not something he wants to contemplate, neither is the awareness that picking up a sword will make her a target in battle. Yet she is his heir and will be queen sooner than he likes. The least he can do is prepare her to protect herself.

"Then you will learn."

.*.

Faris has decided two things at the ripe old age of thirteen: that Merrick is a slave-driver, and that he's hiding more from her than she thought.

The slave-driving bit is easy enough to define. He's always harder on her than the rest of the crew. As a kid he had her hunt rats in the bilge, repair nets, and do anything that needed doing, within her limits. Nowadays he makes her read old ship's constitutions at night and asks her the damnedest questions about them, or makes her sit and do some stitching while he talks about things that bore her, or has her review the financials and make sure the figures all line up right, or has her copy charts, or do any number of other things he can find. If he hasn't found a reason for her to shadow him, he sends her off to run errands, or scrub the deck, or do inventory, or do laundry. If he can't find anything for her to do, he sends her to be trained in the use of a sword by their best fighters and laughed at by the crew for her mistakes. If she's too exhausted to work, he has her read books and says it's because she wants for schooling. And _that_ bit is especially galling, because he doesn't demand the same from Ben. She's been turned into his cabin boy and she hates it.

The _hiding things_ bit is trickier to figure out. It's more of a sense than anything solid. After that weirdness at the port town attached to Tycoon, where she spent her first night in prison, she was never again allowed on shore leave in any of the Tycoon territories. It grates, but more insufferable is the way Ben smirks as he waves at her and disembarks. Merrick argues that he doesn't want to fetch her from prison again, but he has no problem with her delinquency in other port towns.

There's that thing with her pendant, too. She's thirteen and _responsible_ now, but he still insists on taking it every time they go ashore. Merrick tells her that the green is cheap bottle glass etched by some jeweler for practice and that the silver is low-grade, but she's pretty sure he's lying about the silver. All he'll say about it is that it was a pretty bauble she was found with, and for all he knows, it was counterfeit. Faris doesn't quite trust that because it makes no sense when he takes it from her, but it has no bearing on her life. What would he get out of lying to her, anyway?

Merrick's peculiarity about Tycoon is extra strange now, when he receives a message from town about some event there and announces that Renji and the Quartermaster will be taking over the upcoming raid on some merchant vessel they've been planning to bag for days. He hauls Faris from her station at the rigging by the back of her tunic and drags her to his quarters. She barely has time to protest before he locks his door, makes her sit at his water basin, and hacks off her hair.

It infuriates her, not the least because he'd only just started letting her grow it out by her eleventh birthday. It's her one real vanity, and how dare he just lop it off like this!

But there's something in his old, tired brown eyes that stops her curses from escaping her throat and dampens her irritation. It's not something she's ever seen before, not from him. Almost looks like regret, but that's stupid because Merrick doesn't do regret. He does Bitter Old Man, Casual Cruelty, Sadist, Long-Suffering Martyr, and Thinly-Veiled Disgust. And _Captain_, which is a whole thing all on its own, like a role he takes on when needed and pulls off in the privacy of his cabin. Faris doesn't think he has other moods.

"What's going on?" she asks, though she doesn't expect a good answer.

The spring scissors clip away at her hair until she looks more like a boy again, and he doesn't answer until he's nearly done and she's left with maybe a few centimeters up top and less down towards her nape. "Something's come up. We'll need to go to Tycoon. Fetch the dye."

Faris doesn't argue. She complies, even, which she only ever does when he's this serious. He rinses her hair with the foul-smelling dye, washes, and rinses again, until the dye finally takes and her hair turns dark brown.

"Guess you'll want my bauble."

"Reckon you're old enough now to keep it hidden and run if need be." He rinses her hair one last time with water and a dollop of that oil he favors that smells like evergreens.

The ship drops them off near enough to one of the Tycoon ports for them to take the rowboat to shore. Faris tries to get him to clear up his weirdness about the place, but he never says a damned thing that counts as an answer. He just mutters, demurs, or snaps at her to focus on her rowing.

By the time they make it to town, she shelves the entire topic and follows him to the inn to stand by as he books their room. Singular. She's gotten used to sharing his quarters by now and this arrangement is how he looks out for her. She knows his secret, he knows hers, and eventually she'll have to follow his example. It hasn't escaped her that he had her stitch up old binding vests; she knows she'll need a few of her own in a year or so. The awareness of impending puberty makes her sick to her stomach, not the least because Merrick has already set the stage for the absences she'll have to take and provided her with the excuses she'll have to make for separating herself from the crew for a week every month.

Faris knows that she should be grateful for his sudden, uncharacteristic bout of kindness. She resents him for it, instead.

"I'm never going to be the kind of man you are," she says, once they're in the room and the door closes them off from the world.

Faris is a boy, kind of, but not. Not the kind that Merrick is, or that the rest of the crew are. She's a girl, kind of, but not. She _likes_ her body and can't imagine hating it so much as to try to change it like Merrick did his, even if it does eventually betray her. She's not entirely sure where she stands, identity-wise, and the only reason it matters at all is because she hates the way men talk about girls and women when they think there are none around. She hates the way they leer at the tavern women, the way they invade the women's spaces for a grope, the way they _talk_ to them, and she knows she wants none of it aimed at _her_. And yet she swallows down her resentment with her grog, because she _does_ care about the fuckin' bastards. They're still all the family she knows, even if they'll probably turn on her the moment they realize that she doesn't have the same parts they do.

Merrick pauses in checking the beds for lice and other hazards of public houses, but he doesn't quite look at her. "No. You'll be better."

Faris snorts at how _ridiculous_ that statement is, coming from he who often berates her for the smallest things and works her to exhaustion, but says nothing. She practices flipping her dagger, instead.

"Quartermaster's retiring in a year," he says at last. His voice has that grumpy quality to it that makes her suspect that he'll complain of indigestion any time now. "Shadow him until then."

"Why?" Having been on a pirate ship for as long as Faris can remember, the quartermaster's job has always seemed the least appealing of the jobs on the ship. It's all numbers and peacemaking. Faris is a lot of things, but _peacemaker_ isn't one of them.

"'Cause the captain's all flash. We're good for the planning and execution of raids and war, and that's it." He stands straight and looks at her with that expression that brooked no argument. Not that she ever knew when to back down. "All the real power is in the quartermaster. You want to be captain, lad? Learn how to be a quartermaster and _manage_ the crew, first."

Faris realizes, then, that he hasn't been completely unaware of the nonsense she spouts at Ben about wanting to be captain so that she can't be ordered around again. And it _is_ nonsense—captains are voted in, just like quartermasters, and can lose their positions just as easily. It's the constitutions and articles of agreement that dictate what powers captains and quartermasters can and can't have, and they're drawn up with every expedition and change of crew. If she wants to be captain, she has to do something to be worthy of the vote.

So she concedes the point with a grunt. Being a bean-counter, judge, and peacemaker all bundled up into one still holds no appeal to her, but Merrick has been doing this probably since her _parents_ were born and knows what he's on about. And if he thinks she's ready to take on the role of one of the two leaders of a pirate ship, well, she'll just have to rise to the challenge.

As night falls, she pays more attention to his tired old stories of past battles. There _are_ lessons in them, she now knows, and he just doesn't know how to teach them to her beyond just recounting his stories. It's on her to figure out what those lessons are. That's the way it's always been.

They break their fast at the inn the next morning, a normally simple affair of kippers, bread rolls, and eggs made luxurious by the addition of fresh fruit and veg to the meal, and venture out to the main thoroughfare. When she questions Merrick again about why they're there, he's only slightly more helpful than he had been before.

"The queen died," he says, looking like he swallowed a bug again. His hand flits to his stomach the way it usually does when something pains him. Probably his ulcer acting up again. "We're here to watch the blue-bloods trot her corpse through the streets."

Though Faris wants to press the issue and ask why any of this is important enough to take them off the ship, she knows Merrick well enough to know that he'll only snap at her if she does. So she waits, watches the crowd, and her fingers itch to snatch a purse. Which she knows she shouldn't do. Not at a funeral procession.

_Fine_. So she leaves Merrick's side every now and then to pursue a mark, cut their purses, pocket whatever falls out, and run back to him before she's noticed. His grunts of acknowledgement when she returns are the closest she'll ever get to actual approval from him.

Chocobo-drawn carriages rumble over the cobblestones of the main causeway. She's too small, still, to see much of them, so she pushes her way up front. Or tries to, anyway—the crowd is too big, too dense, and she can't quite make out the details of the carriages. The only thing she really notices is the silhouette of a girl roughly her age in one of them, and she's gone before Faris can blink.

When she returns to Merrick again, he looks at her with that unreadable, shuttered expression she never knows how to interpret.

"You could have run away," he finally says. It's like he fully expects her to just abandon him. And…what? Run to a guard and demand to be adopted or something? Which is nonsense. Faris isn't that ungrateful.

"Nah." It's all the answer she's willing to give. _He's_ the one who's been planting notions in her head of captaincy, even when she was little. She has an opportunity to become greater than she is, and Merrick is her guide. Why would she give that up now?

* * *

Notes:

The Final Fantasy Complete Works vol. 1 publication from Digicube states that Alexander's skill in swordsmanship is unmatched.

Queen Tycoon's death is given as seven years before the start of the game in two publications.

Lenna's skill with the sword is mentioned as being on par with the castle guards' in at least two SFam-era publications, and Basic Knowledge expounds on her desire to learn the sword and the military arts to protect the weak and helpless.

Finally: I always do a lot of research for my fics. The information on pirate ship organization, shipboard law, and economics comes from several books I've read over the years, and the economics bits especially are from Pete Leeson's fantastic paper, "An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization".


	4. Perturbation

Faris' rise to power was nothing short of meteoric.

Wait, no, 'meteoric' is a _terrible_ description. Meteors fall, crash, and there's inevitable bickering over who gets to keep the metal ones. Still, the impression of flashy, rapid _speed_ is a sound one.

She was voted in as quartermaster at fourteen, and she largely suspects Merrick's involvement in influencing the vote. She hated doing the numbers to divvy up loot, especially hated applying the multipliers for critical roles or noteworthy displays of bravery in a raid, but it gave her a healthy appreciation for fair wages and the necessity of shipboard law. The constitutions and articles of agreements served as her weapon whenever one of the rules was broken and she actually had to dole out justice, and usually the petty rulebreaking and disagreements were simple enough that she didn't have to figure out much beyond what was already prescribed in the articles. And, as quartermaster, she led enough boarding parties that none doubted her ability to handle herself in battle.

Merrick died when she was fifteen. He didn't fall to battle, the sea, or assassination. He simply died of heart failure at the age of sixty-three. Just keeled over while meeting with Renji over plotting their course. Faris took charge the moment she was alerted of his death, had his corpse hauled to his bed and chased out Renji, and handled the washing and dressing herself because no one was supposed to know his secret. No one was supposed to know about the scars on his chest where his breasts had been. No one was supposed to know that he had the same parts as her, the same parts that would have gotten them both tossed out for violation of the articles of agreement. She made sure that he was dressed in his best by the end of it and had even gone through the trouble of rummaging through his closet.

That's how she ended up staring at the fancy red leather scabbard of a blued-steel sword nearly as long as she was for a good half-hour. She'd found it at the far back of his closet, hidden behind clothes and spare boots, with a note attached. It was scratched through and rewritten several times, but the words were all the same:

_To my son, on your 18th birthday. May it serve you well._

Admittedly, she was a little slow on the uptake. He didn't _have_ a son. Or any sort of family that she knew. It wasn't until she recalled him getting on her case about her _vanity_, obsessing over how much red she should wear to go with the black greatcoat that was still a bit big for her, that realization hit. The sword was meant for _her_.

Faris had very nearly tossed it overboard, incensed as she was that he had the _gall_ to develop sentimentality in his old age. He had never been any kind of father to her, not while she was growing up and certainly not then. Not that Faris knows much about fatherhood, but she's pretty sure fathers aren't supposed to hit their kids, or work them ragged the way Merrick did her. Maybe he never hit her _hard_ and mostly stopped when she was in her teens, and maybe his working her to exhaustion had a point, but _still_, the principle stands. And he'd certainly never been warm to her, or shown her anything she recognized as affection. No, he wasn't her father at all.

She kept the sword anyway. Seemed a waste to toss good steel.

Merrick Reid, proud son of Carwen, was sent on his way to the afterlife in a rowboat they set aflame when it was far enough to be carried out to the open sea by the currents. His earnings from the last raid were divvied up among the crew. Faris took the liberty of claiming his belongings as her own, playing up on their relationship as justification, and she was left alone with his cabin out of respect. For the moment, anyway.

When the vote came for captain, Renji won. At least until the expedition was over. He'd worked with Merrick the longest and had seniority in his favor, so she swallowed down the offense, smuggled anything that betrayed Merrick in her sea chest and moved her things to the smaller quartermaster's cabin, and resumed her duties.

As it so happened, serendipity arose to grant her a new opportunity a few days later. They were on their way to the Torna Canal to take advantage of the foggy weather when they were caught in the currents of a great whirlpool. Faris and Renji barked every order they could think of at the crew to break the ship away, but the current was too strong. They stared down at their doom.

Faris saw a flash of silver in the vortex and heard something in her head that seemed to strike at her very soul and lay her bare. Splinters worked their way into her palms as she gripped the rail hard and she barely even noticed. The feeling of having something call out in her head was familiar, somehow. Never once minding the risk to herself, with only the safety of the crew her concern, Faris jumped in and was caught in the current.

She'd done this before. It's the only thing she remembers of her life before Merrick came along: an alien presence in her head, thunderstorms, and being caught in a whirlpool. When it happened before, she'd been too young, too scared to follow the presence in her head and reach out. But, regardless of what she did now, the currents brought her to a silver-scaled sea dragon.

He _saw_ her in the vortex, somehow. Faris fought to keep her head above water, catching bits of breath when she could before the currents pulled her back in, and she tried to protect her mind from the sea dragon's psychic onslaught. His rage was wild and unfocused, his pain ill-defined. He _screamed_ at her just because she was there and nearly shattered her in the process.

Damn him. Faris screamed back. She screamed to protect Ben, who'd taken to following _her_ around now. She screamed to protect Renji, who was never really a father figure either, but he tried. She screamed to protect the doctor who suspected her secret and said nothing, the cook who slipped her treats when no one was looking, the carpenter who taught her the value of ship maintenance and once whittled her a little toy skiff that's still nestled in the corner of her sea chest, the scout who taught her what kind of clouds to be wary of and told her once that her eyes were the green of certain dangerous types of stormclouds at dusk and dawn, the cooper who taught her how to pack a barrel for smuggling, and so on. She had too many men to protect to let some thrice-damned, overgrown _fish_ drown them.

And then her lungs filled with too much water and she blacked out. Some indeterminate time later, she woke up coughing on a sandy, unfamiliar beach with the sea dragon's head looming over her in concern. Relief that wasn't _hers_ followed when she coughed up the rest of the water and stood to glare up at him.

Green eyes met yellow-green and they _recognized_ each other's soul as kin to their own. They had the same stubborn, fiery spirit.

Naturally, they bonded and fell in love. Not the kind of love she has for the women she spends time with when she was on shore leave, but the deeper kind of love that exists between kindred spirits.

The rest is, as they say, history.

She'd gone back to her crew on the silver sea dragon's back. Silver dragon. Syldra. Which, yes, is an awfully uncreative name, but there aren't words for all the feelings she had tied up in his name. It's something to call him and it suffices for that purpose.

At the age of fifteen, Faris Scherwiz was voted into power as captain for doing something terribly brash and brave to save her crew, and then coming back from the dead on the back of a sea dragon. She was the youngest pirate captain in history.

Faris lasted two successful expeditions and was between ships when her luck ran out.

Roughly two months into her sixteenth year on this planet, Faris had gotten too cocky and made a critical misstep. In her defense, she's also _sixteen_ and no hot-blooded teenager has ever been accused of being sensible. _Especially_ not if there's a pretty girl to impress. It was with absolutely no forethought at all that she told the dark, pretty dancing girl snuggling up to her in the tavern that _of course_ she could make off with a shipment of Karnak's finest mythril. She would do it that night, and she'd collect the crew herself.

Which was, of course, how she ended up in Karnak's prison with her things taken from her instead. This included her pendant, and she swore up a storm at her own stupidity for being caught while wearing it. She had the night in her cell, with the promise of many more nights to come. At least she had Syldra in her head to talk to, which made the night bearable.

Serendipity graced her again the next day, once she'd learned her lesson. The queen of Karnak herself came in the morning, entourage close behind, and held up her pendant. Faris didn't bother to get up from her seat on the straw pallet that served as a bed, but she was sorely tempted to lash out and grab it.

"Where did you get this?" the queen asked, her voice cold as the northern winds in Istory.

It's been a long time since Faris gave the pendant much thought. She was found with it in a shipwreck. It's cheap bottle glass and alloyed silver, probably made as practice by a jeweler and discarded. Not that she actually had it examined, but why would Merrick lie about that? Salt crystals grew into the pits and cavities, and the details in the silver has been worn down or, in the case of the extremities, broken off. Merrick had the silver chain replaced with leather when it broke, and with mythril when she was old enough to appreciate the substitution. It was her only link to her life before Merrick. It means nothing.

"Found with it," she replied, her voice guarded. Not the least because she didn't know why it suddenly mattered. Surely a queen had pricier baubles of her own. "What of it?"

The queen watched her, expression unreadable. "Your birthday?"

Right, now this was getting peculiar. "Third of March." She's not even sure how she knew that, but Merrick said it was and she trusted him.

The queen's eyes narrowed as she studied her, glanced at the glass of her pendant, and studied her again. "Name?"

"Figured your pigs would've told you by now." Biting retort was comfortable and familiar enough to offset the unsettling confusion; she was grateful that it was a kneejerk reaction at this point.

"They have." The queen's smile was thin and humorless, but there was something bright in her eyes. Recognition? Something else? Faris had no idea. "I want to hear you say it."

"Faris Scherwiz."

A slow, crafty smile spread across the queen's face. Like she'd just caught a mouse or something. Faris wasn't sure what was going on there, but it involved her somehow.

"I'll give you this back and release you, but only if you do something for me."

Well, it wasn't like Faris had much choice in the matter. She agreed, if just to get out of prison. The terms: she would allow herself to be cleaned up and paraded as Polymja's lover in order to piss off her court and join her on the way to a funeral for the queen of Walse. It didn't seem so bad, especially when the money was good, freedom was better, and she actually enjoyed Polymja's company. That Faris offended blue-bloods by sharing the same air as the queen was just a nice bonus.

It took a couple of weeks to sail to Walse. While the relative idleness was not unpleasant, Faris was too used to _working_ on a ship to keep from barking orders or busying herself with tasks that wanted for doing. It was tolerated about as well as could be expected, but it was a relief to everyone when she disembarked with Polymja on her arm.

And, finally, they're at Castle Walse. It doesn't smell nearly as mildewy as it should, what with all the water fountains about. The stronger smell is all the perfume and cologne from the memorial service attendees, the natural sweetness from the massive bouquets, and the stench of far too much money consolidated among far too few people.

There's something that nags at the back of Faris' head when Polymja guides her into some massive chamber or other to socialize with the rest of the blue-bloods. It feels _familiar_, somehow, which is absurd. It's probably just indigestion.

"I cannot _wait_ to introduce you to my cousin and her father," Polymja says, eyes dancing with that cosmic joke she has yet to let Faris in on. "They'll be delighted to meet you."

Faris isn't quite sure about that. She's suddenly, painfully aware of the way the blue-bloods' eyes drift down her greatcoat, and of the way they sniff and look disgusted. Some of them grump about Polymja's latest attempt at scandal, others simply take one look and disregard her. It…feels pretty horrid, actually. Instead of the easy marks she was hoping for, she's being treated like a leper.

But, for all that she was coerced here, she does like Polymja. When enough time goes by for most of the nobles to get an eyeful, Faris leans down to kiss Polymja's cheek, makes an excuse of nipping out for a moment for some air, and takes her leave.

Really, what was she thinking? Faris had no business at all being here.

.*.

Alexander has been to too many funerals by now.

This one is for the late queen of Walse. Maybe he's being selfish, but he's grateful that she was taken in her sleep by sheer old age _now_, rather than by anything more painful and less dignified in the future. In her illustrious life, she had escaped while her family was massacred by his predecessor, gathered up a fighting force from Karnak, Jacole, and Lix, and returned to drive out the previous King Tycoon from her lands. She rebuilt Walse with an expertise that was humbling to behold and a drive that might have been superhuman. She took Alexander and Lessandra under her wing when his predecessor was executed for his attempts at conquest, taught them to rule, and let them learn from their own mistakes. She was more of a parental figure than his predecessor had ever been.

Had her grandson and heir apparent thought to adhere to her wishes and kept the funeral a private affair, Alexander might have liked it more. As it is, it's excessive to the point of being gaudy and disrespectful. Flowers hang from every column in the great hall, there was an entire orchestra playing at the memorial service, and he's fairly sure that the feast after the wake will be extravagant. Alwyn had implied as much.

As Alexander greets the attending nobles with all the humility they expect of him, he keeps an eye on Lenna doing much the same. She's gracious and gentle with her words, but not so much that she projects vulnerability. Her smile in response to praises and apple-polishing is warm, but not so warm that she invites more of the same. She knows how to respond to all the social cues in just the right way to project an air of quiet strength.

At fifteen, Lenna is a combination of the best of Alexander's diplomacy and Lessandra's iron resolve, all while still being her own sweet self. He couldn't be more proud of her.

There's a bit of a furor as the queen of Karnak and her companion are announced, not the least because the companion's name is unfamiliar to all of them. It makes him a commoner. Alexander hadn't paid attention simply because Polymja Yllesia Karnak thrives on strife, and bringing a commoner to a function for nobles is just her trying to stir up scandal again.

Alexander watches Polymja make her way around the room with a boy who can't be that much older than Lenna. He never quite gets a good look at the boy's face, but there's something about him that nags at the back of Alexander's mind. Not that it matters in the end; the boy leans down to kiss Polymja's cheek and leaves to do whatever it is that normal teenage boys do. He gets lost in the crowd soon enough.

Polymja makes her way to Alexander sooner than he likes. She smiles like a cat surrounded by the feathers of the bird she just ate, amber eyes glinting with sadistic delight. It sets Alexander on edge, not the least because she enjoys needling him.

"Alex! It's so good to see you," she says with a saccharine quality to her voice that he knows is poisonous. "Did you bring my sweet little cousin?"

"Lenna is here, yes," Alexander replies in as neutral a tone as possible. He never liked the way Polymja gets around Lenna; it's nearly predatory and he half expects Polymja to swoop in and carry off his daughter, like some harpy of old, to be educated in how to be a _proper_ noblewoman. He knows she does it to rile him up, but still, he's a father and can't help it.

"Perfect! I would _love_ to introduce her to my new pet." Her smile widens with a flash of teeth, so pleased with herself that Alexander half expects her to announce that she succeeded at doing something terrible. He already suspects her of having had her father and brother assassinated. Or, rather, they conveniently _fell ill_ roughly within a year of each other, with all the same symptoms. She turns and her face falls just enough for Alexander to suspect that she expected to see her toy boy back at her side.

"Oh, for—Where did he get to?" Polymja stands on her toes to survey the crowd the best she can, given that she's as short as Lessandra had been.

Because he doesn't completely dislike Polymja, Alexander tries to scan the crowd himself. Most of the nobles have that lack of stature standard to the dynasty that rules every kingdom, and from what he could tell of what little he'd seen of the boy, the boy was taller. But there's no sign of the boy anymore; it would have been hard for him to blend in with that eye-catching black greatcoat.

"It seems that he quit whatever enterprise you were on before it started," Alexander says as kindly as he can.

"Of course he did," Polymja mutters under her breath. She pats down her hair absently and glances up at Alexander. "It's a shame. I did so want him to meet you two."

Alexander feigns his interest; nothing about Polymja stringing some hapless boy along to aggravate the rest of the noble houses appeals to him. "Did you?"

"Certainly!" The sparkle in her eyes is deeply amused and unpleasant. "He's a rising star, Alex. He'll make a name for himself soon enough."

The _way_ she says it makes him suspect that she's in on some cosmic joke and he isn't, and she's using that knowledge to lord over him. It's an old, tired game at this point. The only reason he tolerates it from Polymja at all is because, for all her antagonism, she's astute enough to leave her personal feelings out of politics. Polymja may blame him personally for Lessandra's death, but Tycoon and Karnak are close allies. So, he indulges her. "Will he?"

"I've never seen a pirate so masterful." There's an honesty and warmth to the statement that's so unusual that Alexander wonders if this boy is more than just another toy for her to discard when she's bored. "Keep an eye out for him. He's meant to be a king."

A _pirate_. Polymja outdid herself this time—a pet pirate will offend every one of the noble houses as soon as it's common knowledge. "A _commoner_, Queen Karnak?" he asks, his voice dry. She has certainly never been shy about voicing her disagreement with his predecessor's decision to marry Lessandra to him. Nor has she been shy about her opinions on whom _Lenna_ should marry when she's of age; the only acceptable options in her eyes would be another noble. It's a topic he dislikes, not the least because he wants Lenna to make that decision for herself.

There's a rustle as she snaps open her fan and hides her titter behind it. "Oh, _Alex_. If only you knew." Her eyes dance with a silent laugh. "Do yourself a favor and keep him out of prison, will you? You'll hate yourself if you execute him."

Alexander wants to mention that Tycoon doesn't punish piracy with execution, but that will likely lead to another dispute over how he runs his kingdom. Part of diplomacy is knowing when to surrender, and it's never worth playing Polymja's games. "His name?"

"Faris Scherwiz." The amusement lingers in her voice, and there's a hint of expectation in it that suggests that the name should be important somehow.

Nothing comes to mind. The given name sounds like it's from Jacole and the surrounding territories. The family name puzzles him simply because he'd never seen anything like it on any of the guard rosters and censuses. He wonders if it shares the same root word as Scherwil, which itself is an old, traditional woman's given name.

In the end, it doesn't matter. He puts the whole thing out of his mind the moment Polymja's eyes catch on Lenna and she moves to intercept her. Unwilling to let Polymja corrupt his daughter without him hovering nearby to be sure nothing goes too far, he follows shortly behind.

* * *

Notes:  
\- Some translations of the texts I used for fic fodder are here: ajora . dreamwidth 345349 . html  
\- I don't actually know if 3/3 is Sarisa's birthday. There are some fanworks on pixiv that call it Sarisa's Day, so this is a nod to Japanese fandom.


	5. Resonance

Either there's some truth to the adage about distance making the heart grow fonder, Faris is _mature_ at eighteen, or having Syldra around mellowed her out. Maybe there's a bit of everything involved. The result is the same: captaincy has forced her to look back at Merrick's career with newfound respect.

Faris is still not at the point where she thinks of him as her father. Likely she never will be. There are holes in the mental images of who she thinks her parents were, yes, and she has a scar going from the top of her temple and into her hairline where she hit her head when she was lost at sea that's pretty solid evidence that she was in a shipwreck, but Merrick never really fit into those holes. He was too hard and stoic to offer a father's warmth, and at this point she's sure that he didn't know _how_. He had always been a captain and she was his student.

At her age, she's well past needing a family, let alone a _father_, anyway. Faris operates best alone.

Frankly, Faris doesn't know whether to curse Merrick's bones or bless them. She knows shipboard operations inside and out. It's almost as if the ship speaks to her: if it groans one way, all's good and it's just the timbers stretching and straining within their limits; if it groans another way, she needs to go ashore immediately to seek out whatever structural weakness changed the tone of its groaning. She knows the smell of rot in the rigging and how much strain a rope can take, and just when to replace it. She knows just when to careen the ship for maintenance and reapplication of creosote, and generally she prefers it before the barnacles and shipworms get so extensive as to be a problem. She can ride out natural storms that make the hardiest seaman quail, because Renji taught her how to handle the ship in the worst conditions. She knows what to look for in crewmen, what to avoid, and what to say to convince a promising soul to go on account. At this point she has done just about every job that _can_ be done on a ship. She knows more about being a pirate captain than any of her peers, and she has Merrick to thank for that.

Faris also has him to thank for her confusion. Man? Woman? Both? Neither? Hell if she knows; self-examination isn't something that comes easy to her when there are things in need of doing that are outside of herself. When she tries to figure it out, she simply has no feeling strong enough to declare one or the other. If such labels are even necessary. All she knows is that she quite likes her body, doesn't want to change it, and doesn't think she's the kind of man Merrick was. Simple binding and crossdressing suffices for her. The offense she takes at being called _womanly_ or _girlish_ isn't because she _is_, it's because she can hear the denigration in the offender's tone of voice and refuses to tolerate it.

She _likes_ women. And women like _her_, especially when she struts around with her hard-won confidence, smiles winningly, finds something worth praising them for, and reels them in with a saucy wink and dark promises. Faris is always just roguish enough to be interesting and just gentlemanly enough to be considered safe. With high passions and enough alcohol, most of them are happy just to let her handle everything and can be convinced not to bother with reciprocation. Which, admittedly, isn't an _ideal_ situation, but it's better to keep her secrets to herself.

The added bonus of being a known womanizer is that it keeps a certain type of man from trying to pursue her. Faris had always been aware that men who preferred other men tended to flock to ships, and it never really concerned her. She even appreciates the irony of banning women from ships to prevent jealousy from complicating relations between crewmen, especially when she has had to pass judgment on fights over some prettyboy's affections. Usually these matters have simple solutions: either toss the bickering parties ashore to duel or ask the point of contention what he would prefer.

Of course, sometimes those men have their uses beyond their allotted jobs on the ship. Ben's crush on her is _adorable_ and it's never going to go anywhere, and he knows better than to try anything. But it's useful, and it makes him loyal and more inclined to defer to her demands. With him as her quartermaster, her power is unprecedented for an elected pirate captain.

"You're meant to be a king," Polymja told her some time before Faris abandoned her in Walse. In the wake of her cowardice, which she's still berating herself for, Faris put it and everything involved with Polymja well out of her mind. Yet now, as the winds change with the installation of some machine to control the Wind Crystal, the words come back to her and she's still not sure how to take them.

Ben's deference to her as quartermaster was a taste of absolute power on a small scale; now, with Polymja's words in her head, she wonders. _What does it take to build a kingdom?_

The question is a trinket she brings out to contemplate during quiet moments in her cabin, when the bulk of the crew should be asleep, and shelves before going to sleep herself. It's an idle thought that becomes increasing less idle the longer Tycoon uses the Wind Crystal to empower its merchant fleet.

The first problem: the change in the tradewinds. Typically the currents cycle from Tule to the Tycoon ports to the Torna Canal on a widdershins cycle and flush through the canal on the way to Walse. To go against it means utilizing the west-bound tradewinds, which isn't always reliable when the black moon is exceptionally large in the sky. Tycoon's control of the Wind Crystal makes the tradewinds go east in the first part of the week and west during second part, with a regularity that throws lifelong sailors into confusion. It's a change that only benefits the large merchant and naval ships, because they're the ships that run that route with any regularity. The average fisherman is left scrambling to adhere to the merchant fleet schedule.

The second problem: the cost of transit passage papers. In order to utilize the Crystal-enhanced route, one needs papers to get through the Torna Canal. At first, when this whole thing was instituted a couple of years back, it was affordable. It got increasingly less affordable for non-merchants. Freelance captains and merchants who were just starting out couldn't afford to go through the Canal anymore. The other option to get to Walse, a low-lying expanse of sand shot through the isthmus south of the canal, can only be traversed two ways: mount the ship on rolling logs and pull it through, or wait for an unreliable high tide when the black moon is at its largest. Faris has little problem with this latter avenue, but she also has a dragon friend who used it throughout his life and knows just where the sand lies lowest.

The third problem: crowding along the Crystal-enhanced route. It's dangerous navigation for smaller ships, especially during busier times. The captains of the huge, heavy merchant ships don't care; they're insured, and smaller ships are much more likely to get destroyed in their wakes. The navy doesn't care; the warships are big, heavy, and they have their own special privileges.

What _ever_ is the average seaman to do?

In an incredible twist of luck, or favorable foresight, Faris already had Merrick's old ship renamed and fixed up to her tastes, tarred, and modified. The main modification was reinforcement of the bow-side timbers and installation of chains for Syldra's harness. Without the structural reinforcement, Syldra's first tug might very well rip the ship apart. It was done after she got the idea to utilize her friend's willingness to help the ship plow through spots of dead winds and lack of currents, and it proves to be exceptionally useful now. She's no longer limited by relying on either winds or currents.

Faris knows opportunity when she sees it, and it's been offered to her with apple stuck in its mouth and on a silver platter.

Taking it, however, is proving to be difficult. Manning the _Maelstrom_ was less of a problem once she befriended Syldra; technically she can sail with a skeleton crew if she has to. But to get a head start on building a kingdom, she needs a spectacle. Faris, having learned from the best, recalls Merrick's stories of fleets of pirate ships working together to take on the navy. It's _that_ bit of theater she wants to stage: attacking the merchant ships along the Crystal-enhanced route all in one go. It's grandiose, it's daring, it's dangerous because of the navy guarding the ships—if the plan works, it would set up every pirate involved for life.

Naturally, she forgot to take into account her youth. Oh, the other captains will humor her for about five minutes on account of her supposedly being Merrick's son, but then they laugh, commend her on her brass, and tell her to come back when she has hair on her chin and more men at her disposal.

As a beard isn't happening any time soon, she needs more men. And it's not like she hasn't tried, but there's only so much she can do as the world's youngest pirate captain. It's a puzzle she's been playing with for a while, but she's on shore leave now and the latest rebuff leaves her wanting the attentions of those who know better than to openly judge her for her inexperience.

Ben barges in on her whilst she's dining with a young lady of negotiable virtue in her room in Tule's inn. He doesn't _look_ drunk enough to start declaring his love for her again, so Faris assumes he's simply being ill-mannered. The young lady, who is new to her particular brand of employment, pales and goes stiff at the table. Likely she's been given horror stories aplenty about the men she'll be expected to entertain in the future. Not being the particularly cruel type, especially towards women, Faris slips her a few extra gil and tells her to come back in half an hour; Ben doesn't usually barge in on her unless there's business to discuss.

"Faris Scherwiz, patron god of new whores," Ben says dryly, once the young lady excuses herself and leaves for the time being.

"Ben, please, they're ladies who provide a much-needed service." Faris pours herself another cup of wine; the last thing she needs right now is some buggerer remarking on her vices. "If it has to happen, I'd rather romance them proper before other men get around to disappointing them."

Her quartermaster pulls out the recently-vacated chair a little more to sit in it. Faris sets the plate cover over the remains of the lady's meal before he gets the idea to eat it for her. "How generous of you."

Rather than respond verbally, because her pursuit of women while on shore leave is born of a selfish need for human contact she never allows herself on the ship, she raises her cup in acknowledgement before drinking. He'll say what he needs to in time.

"Heard you talking to Cap'n Cofresi. That's, what? Sixth to turn you down?"

"Mm." And now she's put off of her supper. He'll put her off dessert if he doesn't get to the point soon, and she'd been looking forward to a slice of pie for weeks. "So?"

"They'd take you more seriously if you dressed normal-like. None of those long clothes."

"Bit of theater. You know that." Faris hides her bitterness behind her cup and sips at it slowly. She can't mention that under the greatcoat is several feet of fabric wrapped around her midriff to hide her waist, that it hides her thighs and rear end from roaming eyes whose owners might figure out that she's not shaped like a man, or that it helps the binding vest keep her breasts flattened enough that no one notices them. She can't say that the cravats hide her lack of that bump men have in the throat. She can't draw attention to the fact that she not only wears the elevated heels for better footing when she climbs the rigging, she also wears them for extra height to intimidate people with. The whole ensemble is heavy, often sweltering, and at the end of the day she aches from binding her breasts for so long. If she thought she could get away with wearing a simple tunic and breeches, she would.

He pauses, his eyes lingering on the bottle of wine. Faris has half a mind to send him off with it, if just to get him out of her room. But no, he opts to continue speaking. "Time mightn't be right for your theatrics, 's'all I'm saying. Stage your war when we've more hands."

"It'll be too late by then."

They sit in silence for a moment. It's thick, always uncomfortable like it's been since Ben started looking at her funny, and she's tempted to just toss him out and call the lady back in.

The answer comes to her when he skewers a bit of her untouched mutton with his knife and slices himself a bit before most people would notice it. Faris, having known him practically all her life, watches his sleight of hand and lets it go unremarked. Mutton tastes too much like lanolin smells, anyway. Strangely, it reminds her of his urchin friends in one of Tycoon's port towns from back when Renji had him abandon her to the planned burglary to teach her a _lesson_ in humility, and—

Faris' grin is predatory as she parries his knife with her fork and snatches the roasted potato cube he was aiming for. "Have the men onboard at dawn. I've an idea."

Ben takes his leave then. Out of brotherhood or whatever, he sends the lady back to her.

The next couple of weeks go by quickly. If her problem is a lack of manpower, well, she'll just have to find herself some men. Maybe Tule might not have been her best option for recruiting; between the recent landslide destroying the only passage from Tycoon territory to Karnak and the Tycoon navy being more unbearable than usual, her choices would have been slim anyway. There are other places she can go.

Given that piracy is ultimately a blanket term for a variety of illegal acts, she could do with men who already have no quarrel with committing said illegal acts. The scum of the earth, as it were. As she's been around criminals all her life, and is the scum of the earth herself, it's not a prospect that bothers her. Combine that with her need for something flashy and she has her resolution to the problem of getting her little war started.

Faris' arrest goes just as she planned it; she got caught watching a nice little string of warehouses go up in flames. Everything else is in place: her pendant safe in Ben's keeping, most of her crew waiting on the ship, the rest waiting in alleys, and Syldra slinking just outside the harbor in wait for her cue. Her eyes were, perhaps, too bright and her grin too maniacal to lull the guards into a sense of security, but she didn't plan on getting out the usual way. What matters is that the inmates see her strutting on her way to her cell as if none of it matters.

Whilst in her cell, she makes a big to-do about her plans to break them out. Promises anyone who'd like to follow her that she'll take them under her wing if they choose to go on account. They laugh at her, of course, but she's in a good mood and allows it. Whether or not it works is irrelevant now; she's made her offer and it's up to them to take her up on it.

It's when the white moon peeks out from behind the black that she calls for Syldra. He delights in the mischief, of course, and the thunderstorm he summons over Tycoon's seaside jail cracks so loudly that she can feel the thunder through her boots. The noise hides the clanking as her men scurry from window to window to hook the bars to the chains leading to Syldra's harness, and one of them even has the brass to wink at her as he takes care of her window and moves on to the next. It takes Syldra little more than a quick heave and the bars break through the window frames like nails through so much rotten wood.

Seizing the opportunity with both hands, Faris leaps out of her cell's window and darts as quickly as she can down the road linking the jail to the harbor. Faintly she's aware of more of her fellow escapees than she expected following her, but the bulk of her attention is on making sure she's not going to trip over something along the way. She's more conscious of the fact that her men have the city guard tied up to ease her way, and she'll have to thank them proper when they're back in Tule. None of that lasts for long in her mind as she jumps off a pier and onto Syldra's back.

Well aware of the power of her theatrics, Faris stands facing the approaching inmates with one hand on her hip and the other stretched out to hold on to the forespine of Syldra's dorsal fin. As winded as she is by then, her binding vest hampers her efforts to get enough air back in her. It takes every bit of steel in her to look unflappable with a stitch deep in her side. Further away, the locals watch on in what is surely disbelief. Syldra breaks up the thunderstorm, which clears out the clouds enough for better lighting. The full white moon's light is bright as it falls on her and silvers the scales of her dearest friend.

"Name's Faris," she hollers out to the inmates with just the right amount of self-confidence. This is really best done with a larger stage for dramatic pacing and swishing of the greatcoat, but the picture of a sea dragon putting up with her standing on his back has its own kind of power. "Go on account with us and you'll be rewarded handsomely. Equal shares of every bit of loot for every able hand. More than you'll ever get in the navy. Stay and, well, can't promise you won't be recaptured."

Some do stay behind and disappear into the shadows. But enough get into the rowboats waiting for them that she pays this no mind. What she needed was the spectacle and a few more men, and it's there she succeeded.

.*.

Lenna's birthday should have come and gone without much fanfare—his daughter prefers not to inconvenience anyone if she can help it. Neither of them anticipated Polymja of Karnak using the landslides at Tule's passage to Karnak as excuse to stay in Tycoon for a bit and take command of any and all preparations for Lenna's birthday party. Alexander couldn't get a word in edge-wise. Lenna tried to assure her cousin that she didn't need such a fuss, but Polymja wouldn't hear of it. Thanks to Hurricane Polymja, Lenna's seventeenth birthday was the most elaborate she'd ever had. There was an orchestra, a feast, some street performers to provide entertainment, and it all went well into the night.

The party soured his mood, but it's during the aftermath the next day that Alexander has concerns further complicating his mood. His daughter, who is usually prudent about adhering to her schedule, missed her geography tutoring session and has yet to be found. Neither has Polymja been found, and she's usually a heavy drinker at such functions and should have been sleeping.

It's not that he doesn't trust Lenna's virtue around Polymja—the queen's vices are many, but Polymja was close to Lessandra and treats Lenna like her own as a result. What he doesn't trust is Polymja's wild ideas and propensity for scandal, and Lenna is still too young to be listening to her cousin's nonsense.

One of the castle guards finds them and reports their whereabouts to Alexander. It calms him, a little, to know that they're on the curtain wall; it's a favorite haunt of Lenna's and she made a habit of walking along it when she wants time to pace and think. She's much like him in that way. Polymja probably just came across her during her morning walk.

His approach is silent, borne of an ancient habit of sneaking around to avoid his predecessor's wrath, and it startles Polymja enough that she shrieks when he appears before them. Lenna, who has adopted similar practices and likely saw him coming, smiles nervously at him as she holds an exquisitely-crafted sword and its scabbard close.

Alexander stretches out his hand in silent request; his daughter turns over her sword with all the guilt of a child caught with her hand in a cookie jar. The scabbard is Tycoon-blue leather stretched over wood, decorated with finely-tooled patterns of sky dragons and clouds, and accentuated here and there with jewels and mythril. The hilt is light and small for him, but perfect for Lenna's hands; its pebbled leather wrappings allow for a good grip without chafing, and it's just large enough for her to use it two-handed if she has to. The blade is the finest quality mythril he'd ever seen, and it's long and light and so well balanced that it was surely made by a master.

"Polly had it made for my birthday," Lenna says at last. Her tone is neutral, but her chin lifted just _so_, in silent defiance. Despite it, he has difficulty suppressing a smile. She's so much like his wife sometimes.

"It's well-crafted." He returns it to her with the unspoken wish that she'll never have to use it in a real battle. It's harrowing enough knowing that she watches the castle guard train and learns from them. Sometimes he watches her practice following their motions with a sense of despair. It's not something he wanted, not for her. She's too kind, too empathetic. He doesn't want her to be a warrior.

Naturally, Polymja chooses that moment to barge in. "I was just telling my dear cousin about the captain of my personal guard. She's a woman and the finest swordsman I've seen. Other than you, of course. If Lenna so wishes, I'm sure I can spare Captain O—"

"No need," he says to her, though his eyes fix on his daughter's. He knows he promised that he would train her, but it was a promise made when they were both grieving and hadn't been addressed since. He can't put it off any longer, not when he has no excuses left. "Lenna, I'll be making an adjustment to your schedule. Starting Monday, I want to see you at the aerie at dawn."

Though she refrains from being too improperly enthusiastic, Lenna brightens with the realization that he'll finally follow through on his promise. "Of course, Father."

It was, as it turns out, the highest point of his day. Reports of the Tule-Karnak passage finally being cleared of debris means Polymja can go back home, so he has a ship prepared for her. And, because Polymja always gets her way, he finds himself dragged to the port in the evening to indulge her desires to walk among the commoners. She doesn't do it because she cares about them, she does it to feel superior. To Queen Karnak, commoners are like toys she can play with and throw out when she's bored. At least when she's dragging him along, he can keep an eye on her.

Alexander seldom bothered with the port attached to Tycoon anymore, but with Polymja on his arm, he can't avoid it. The bustle is familiar enough. Too familiar. He tries to ignore it, and tries harder to ignore the baseless despair. Everything associated with the sea is tied to a memory he does his best to forget.

"Do you ever think of her anymore?" Polymja asks suddenly, as they near a hill overlooking the docks. His personal guard, following close behind, stops when they do. It's night by the time they reach the crest of the hill, and the white moon has only just come out from behind the black.

"Every single day," Alexander replies. The question might have been a punch to his gut, abrupt as it is. "We were married since we were children. How can I not?"

Polymja's eyes search his, like he'd given the wrong damned answer. Yet, as much as he rakes his mind, he's not sure _how_. When she finally looks away, towards the docks, her voice is cold. "I'll tell her when I see her again because I still care about her. You don't deserve to know."

Puzzled and disturbed in equal measure, Alexander can't find it in him to respond. Not that he's given much of a chance. The clear sky fills with dark, thunderous clouds too quickly for it to be natural, and the claps of lightning are so loud as to deafen anyone in the area.

Chaos erupts at the docks and he has no clue what's happening. Driven by her love of disasters, Polymja yanks him along with her towards it with a distinct disregard towards their safety. As they approach, he notices people running towards the docks.

The massive head of a sea dragon erupts from the water and the thunderstorm breaks. The clouds clear out as quickly as they formed, leaving behind that distinct scent of ozone in their wake. A figure leading the charge jumps from the pier to the sea dragon's back in a great leap that would make a Highwind jealous and says _something_; he's too far away to hear anything.

Polymja bounces in utter delight beside him. "It's him! Alex, it's _Faris!_ Look," she exclaims. She tries to tug him along, but he's fixed in place by the sheer spectacle of someone having the temerity to _jump on a sea dragon's back_. And the sea dragon _indulges_ him, as if—

_Notos_, he calls out to his dragon, who waits for him outside of town. _The sea dragon and the boy, can you—_

His lifelong companion's mind perks up at his question and grows distracted as he casts out a net of thoughts. Alexander watches people pour into rowboats as he does so, and then the sea dragon pulls away with the man still standing on his back.

_Syldra blocks me from him and his partner. He's too strong_, Notos says at last. His mind is troubled and Alexander can't make out why. _Told me to 'fuck off'. What is fuck?_

Alexander sighs. _Nothing you need to concern yourself with, old friend. Thank you_.

The idle thought, that maybe the boy might be a surviving Highwind, he dismisses with a sense of disgust at his baseless hopes. No Highwind has ever tamed a sea dragon.

The next day, Alexander finds that he was focusing on the wrong damned things. The upstart of a pirate captain used his sea dragon to rip open the jail and recruit more criminals to his crew. Alexander has to mobilize his troops to collect any inmate that managed to escape and stayed on land during the spectacle.

By the middle of the week, after he has his spies report what they can gather of the infamous Faris Scherwiz and the long list of crimes they suspect him of, he has a headache and it's that boy he has to blame. The boy has been seen trying to recruit other pirate captains to some cause none of the spies know. Alexander suspects that whatever his plans, the boy will be trouble.


End file.
